Black History Week started in the US over a century ago with Dr. Carter G. Woodson's vision to remember people and events of the African diaspora. In the 21st century, Black History Month is recognized across the globe. Today, our incredibly diverse US office — six languages spoken, five ethnicities, and ALL WOMEN — urges us to celebrate Black excellence year round. Find out what Lord clients are doing for Black History, beyond the month of February.

On April 4, 1968, when a single bullet shattered the dream under an overcast Memphis sky, the Civil Rights movement was in high swing. Though a nation mourned, resilience enabled a people to fit the pieces together again and continue the march toward equality. One essential element of any rights movement is the thoughtful protection of history and memory.

The City of Detroit announced plans to expand city hall’s support of local arts, culture and music initiatives, including plans for a citywide artist census and a new fund to accept donations to local arts programs.

Lord Cultural Resources worked with City of Detroit on their Cultural Plan.

Abbotsford doesn’t fund its cultural programs and organizations as richly as other communities, a new city-commissioned report says. While the city has boosted its support of programs, similar cities still provide much more funding for cultural activities. That is one of the key findings included in a “State of Culture Report” as Abbotsford begins work on a new culture strategy. The city is also now calling for public feedback on the strategy. The State of Culture Report, which created by Lord Cultural Resources and City staff, gauged total per capita cultural spending in Abbotsford at about $6.24 per resident.

An expert team from Camosun College’s Applied Research Centre visited the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg on Feb. 17 to scan The Witness Blanket, a large-scale art installation by University of Victoria artist and professor Carey Newman, whose traditional name is Hayalthkin’geme.

BLKNWS will be on view in three distinct venues: BAM's Devitre Lounge, located in the Peter Jay Sharp Building; the BAM Strong Campbell Lobby, the newly renovated inner lobby adjacent to the Harvey Theater; and Weeksville Heritage Center, one of the first communities for free Black Americans in the US. Presenting BLKNWS at Weeksville allows the groundbreaking work to be seen in a non-theater space and by different audiences and communities and expands on BAM's long-established relationship with the historical institution.

As Nova Scotians celebrate the history of Africville, the provincial government said that a historic piece of the African Nova Scotian community will return to the place where it once stood.

For Black History Month, Brooklyn Children’s Museum kicked off its latest exhibit, the “Black Future Festival,” a week-long Afro-futurist themed celebration that ran from February 17-23. The museum partnered with musician-artist Kwame Brandt-Pierce to seven days of activities revolving around an imagined universe inspired by the African Diasporan cultures around the world.

Lord Cultural Resources worked with the Brooklyn Children’s Museum on their Strategic Plan.

The International African American Museum announced the appointment of four new members to its Board of Directors effective January 1, 2020.  New board members include Vernita Brown, James Hairston, Reverend Dr. Isaac Holt, Jr., and Professor Heather Williams. These appointments increase the museum’s Board of Directors to 31 members. All members are elected for a term of three years.

“We are honored to welcome these outstanding individuals to our Board of Directors,” said Wilbur E. Johnson, Chairman of the museum’s Board. “Our new board members are respected in their fields and will bring tremendous value to our organization during this important foundational period. Their appointments will enable our continued evolution and support our mission to honor the untold stories of the African American journey.”

If the Canadian Museum for Human Rights looks familiar, it may be because the unusual-looking building appears on our $10 bill. The distinctive architecture is not its only unusual feature. Unlike other museums that primarily display artifacts, this one is more about ideas. It’s the first of its kind in the world dedicated to human rights, and the only national museum outside the National Capital Region. Situated in the historic Forks area of Winnipeg, it ranks among Manitoba’s top attractions.

The $113,000 that the feds promised the Art Gallery of Hamilton Tuesday could result in many times more being spent on renovating the AGH and on the creation of a new civic history museum. The money is earmarked for a feasibility study to determine how best to flush out and flesh out appreciation of the gallery's invaluable permanent art collection, some 10,000 pieces strong, including many masterworks, only a fraction of which are showing at any given time.

Lord Cultural Resources has been contracted by the Art Gallery of Hamilton to complete this newly funded feasibility study.

Macon-Bibb residents came out to the Rosa Jackson Community Center to give their opinions on how the city’s art community should look. The first draft of the Macon-Bibb Cultural Master Plan was released Monday. The draft includes the following five priorities: Tourism, Education, Creative industries, Neighborhood development, Audience cultivation.

Joy Bailey-Bryant, the vice president of Lord Cultural Resources, says there are different forms of art that assist with different scenarios—like helping those with mental health issues or those behind bars. Bailey-Bryant says the improvements will also boost tourism and city revenue.

"Whites Only," "Europeans Only," "Non-Whites Shop," "Coloured Entrance," "Black Women's Washrooms," "For Use by White Persons." The signs are the first thing visitors see at the Ken Seiling Waterloo Region Museum's new exhibit—Mandela: Struggle for Freedom.

It was a chance sighting while stuck in lousy traffic — and now a piece of Toronto’s music history has joined a growing collection of glowing gems chronicling the city’s neon past.

Lord Cultural Resources worked with Neon Museum Toronto to develop their concept and high-level operations and business plan.

After working on dozens of exhibits at 12 museums, Jenney Fazande has learned a lot — and she’s nowhere close to finished. At 35 years old, Jenney Fazande has accomplished a lot of firsts. She’s the first woman, as well as the first African American, to hold the director of exhibits position at The National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana. Not only is this museum huge in a physical sense (it occupies five full city blocks) it’s the largest museum dedicated to WWII in the entire country.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Yael Kelly can’t remember a time when she didn’t want to be an artist.

“When I was 5, I announced to my mother that I was going to be a painter, an artist,” Kelly recalled. She was recently selected to show off her art at the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador as part of the Art in Embassies program, an initiative that uses art as a way to communicate between cultures. “Art has real power,” Kelly explained. “It can move us in a way that we really can’t explain in words. You just feel it.”

The House of Representatives has passed a bill to establish a new Smithsonian museum for women’s history. It would be the 20th museum in the Smithsonian Institution, which most recently opened the National Museum of African American History and Culture in September 2016. Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney of New York introduced the bipartisan bill last March, in honor of Women’s History Month, along with representatives Brian Fitzpatrick, Eleanor Holmes Norton, and Brenda Lawrence. It now has 293 co-sponsors in total. A companion piece of legislation sponsored by Senator Susan Collins of Maine and Dianne Feinstein of California, is still working its way through the Senate.

In Longworth’s terminology, global cities do exhibit certain “pathologies” embodying the challenges of the 21st century. Be they climate change, terrorism or inequality, to name just a few, these all have a cultural dimension. Taking climate change as an example, it is now widely recognized that tackling it is not simply a challenge of governance or technology but one that needs to be dealt with holistically. Changing how people go about their lives, their culture, “the hearts and minds of the citizens,” in order to tackle climate change, must be part of that equation.

For most museums, success is scored in numbers—revenue, attendance, Instagram “likes.” But the Oakland Museum of California, which caters to a broad swath of communities in the Bay Area, sought to define something more elusive, yet equally important: its own social impact.

Being Punjabi: Unfolding the Surrey Story is a multimedia exhibition at the Museum of Surrey that presents 16 local Punjabi voices using the written word, audio recordings, video, artifacts, art, and images.

Although the art world flies into Miami en masse every December, locals can participate in the city's excellent museums year-round. Huge collections at the city's larger institutions display the growing canon of contemporary art, while smaller museums specialize in single subjects, such as design, graffiti, and even erotica. Wherever your interests lie, you'll find something stimulating at these ten best art museums in Miami.

Collingwood residents share their story—and their family's legacy—as founders of the Sheffield Park Black History and Cultural Museum. A few family photos etched on small rectangles of tin began a collection that would not only reflect black history and culture in the area but would also help preserve historical sites across the region.

The tin negatives belonged to Howard Sheffield, and they were the beginning of the Sheffield Park Black History and Cultural Museum, which is now located on Clark Street in Clarksburg.

Less is a Bore by Dezeen columnist Owen Hopkins reveals the diversity of postmodern architecture from around the world. Here, he spotlights 10 significant structures from the book that come in all shapes, sizes and colours.

Grimshaw, the studio behind the Eden Project in Cornwall, has designed an ecological resort in Northern Ireland that will feature a thatched play area and treetop walkways. Commissioned by environmental charity Eden Project International, the Eden Project Foyle will be built on a 100-hectare site on the bank of the River Foyle in Derry that is currently inaccessible. It will contain a mix of nature-focused attractions designed by Grimshaw, and centre around The Acorn – a giant play area made of thatch and timber.

"Our partnership with Eden Project continues with the plan for Eden Project Foyle," revealed Grimshaw in an Instagram post.

Nesta’s latest Digital Culture report reveals depressing news: the proportion of organizations whose senior management are knowledgeable about #digital technology has fallen from 22% in 2013 to 13% in 2019.

A life-size digital projection of the colorful Souk al-Zarb in Aleppo, Syria, vibrant with activity of daily life, turns in seconds before our eyes into endless pathways through ashen ruins. So begins “Age Old Cities: A Virtual Journey from Palmyra to Mosul” at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, an immersive experience for viewing the recent destruction by ISIS of ancient ruins. An accompanying documentary, “Greetings from Aleppo,” reveals the effects of devastation through the eyes of the residents, who are trying to maintain normalcy, constantly sweeping up rubble amid the sound of frequent gunfire.

In 1926, the historian Carter G. Woodson instituted Negro History Week. The second-ever African American recipient of a Ph.D. from Harvard (after W.E.B. DuBois), Woodson wanted to acknowledge the vibrant cultural achievements of African American individuals that were rippling through the country. At the time, Harlem was brimming with poets such as Langston Hughes and Claude McKay, while Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller were developing Chicago’s jazz scene. In 1976, President Gerald Ford officially transformed Woodson’s initiative into the month-long celebration we honor to this day: Black History Month.

While it’s impossible to capture the full impact of black artists on art history, we asked prominent art historians and curators reflect on 20 living African American artists who are making a mark on painting, photography, performance, and sculpture. Below, with the artists listed alphabetically, are their reflections.

New York City has three of the greatest public library systems in the world, with hundreds of branches and a combined collection topping 60 million items. But for some New Yorkers, that’s not good enough.

Demographic Diversity of Artists in Canada in 2016, released last week by Hill Strategies, states that Indigenous artists make 68 cents for every dollar non-Indigenous artists make.

Once relegated to the margins, artists of African descent continued to migrate toward the center of the art world in 2019, claiming space on just about every front as the decade came to a close. Black contemporary artists won many of the year’s most prestigious and lucrative international art prizes. They shared their work and broadened their audiences by engaging in thoughtful public dialogues, publishing books, and staging exhibitions.

The poll found that the average American visited a library 10.5 times a year. According to the American Library Association, there were 1.4 billion in-person visits to the public library in the U.S. in 2016, the equivalent of about 4 million visits each day.

Baku White City, a contemporary art platform for artists, designers and architects, attracts creative people. In recent years works of art by participants of the International Sculpture Symposium "Song of the Stone", Amsterdam artist Josef Klibanski, French street artist Thierry Noir, British sculptor Tony Cragg and others were placed in Baku White City.

DETROIT - The city unveiled plans for a new office intended to bolster creativity and art in Detroit. Announced as the Office of Arts, Culture, and Entrepreneurship, or ACE for short, it's meant to cultivate and build on the Detroit's cultural emblems and spread them across the city. "Mayor Mike Duggan is not changing the city, he's transforming the city, neighborhood by neighborhood," said Art and Culture Director Rochelle Riley. "And I want art to be a part of every single neighborhood."